The dialect of Elis and its position within the Greek dialectological system MA-thesis for the Master Classics and Ancient Civilisations Le site antique d’Olympie, illustration taken from Minon 2007 : 559 by M.J. van der Velden BA supervisors: dr. L. van Beek dr. A. Rademaker 2015-17 Universiteit Leiden Table of contents i. Acknowledgements ii. List of abbreviations 0. Introduction 1. The dialect features of Elean 1.1 West Greek features 1.1.1 West Greek phonological features 1.1.2 West Greek morphological features 1.1.3 Conclusion 1.2 Northwest Greek features 1.2.1 Northwest Greek phonological features 1.2.2 Northwest Greek morphological features 1.2.3 Conclusion 1.3 Features in common with various other dialects 1.3.1 Phonological features in common with various other dialects 1.3.2 Morphological features in common with various other dialects 1.3.3 Conclusion 1.4 Specifically Elean features 1.4.1 Specifically Elean phonological features 1.4.2 Specifically Elean morphological features 1.4.3 Conclusion 1.5 General conclusion 2. Evaluation 2.1 The consonant stem accusative plural in -ες 2.2 The consonant stem dative plural endings -οις and -εσσι 2.3 The middle participle in /-ēmenos/ 2.4 The development *ē > ǟ 2.5 The development *ӗ > α 2.6 The development *i > ε 3. Conclusion 4. Bibliography 2 Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude towards Lucien van Beek for supervising my work, without whose help, comments and – at times necessary – incitations this study would not have reached its current shape, as well as towards Adriaan Rademaker for carefully reading my work and sharing his remarks. Secondly, I would like to thank all the teachers from Classics staff for teaching me and raising my Greek and Latin language proficiency to the level it currently has, and in particular Joëlle Koning, Adriaan Rademaker, Marjolein van Raalte, and Ineke Sluiter for helping me paving the path into the Master’s Programme of Classics and Ancient Civilisations. Finally, my friends’ and family’s emotional support must not be underestimated, carrying me through the process of writing this work at times things were going less fluently as they should. Also to them I wish to express my utmost gratitude. Leiden, May 2017 3 List of abbreviations acc. - accusative aor. - aorist art. - article Att. - Attic comp. - comparative conj. - conjunction Cr. - Cretan dat. - dative deict. - deictic du. - dual fem. - feminine fut. - future gen. - genitive imp. - imperative inf. - infinitive Locr. Ep. - Epizephyrian Locrian masc. - masculine mid. - middle n. - noun neg. - negative neut. - neuter nom. - nominative opt. - optative p. - person p. pron. - personal pronoun par. - paragraph part. - participle Pgr. - Proto-Greek PIE - Proto-Indo-European pl. - plural prep. - preposition pres. - present ptc. - participle sg. - singular Skt. - Sanskrit subj. - subjunctive superl. - superlative 4 0. Introduction The Greek dialect of Olympia and the surrounding region of Elis was spoken in the northwest of the Peloponnese and has been transmitted to us by thirty-four larger inscriptions. The majority of these date from the sixth and fifth century B.C. A smaller part of eleven inscriptions from the next two centuries – in which an increase of similarity with the koinè language is discernible – is also attested. The first inscription written in the Elean dialect – a bronze tablet containing the conditions of a treaty between the Olympians and the neighbouring town of Eua – was discovered by William Gell in 1813. Numerous other inscriptions from Elis have been found since then, so that the present number of the Elean inscriptions handed down to us is over thirty, which is a fairly rich amount in comparison to the number of inscriptions from other Greek cities at such an early stage. Apart from these larger inscriptions, which mainly contain (religious) law decrees and treaties, smaller texts written in the Elean dialect, such as dedications and signatures, have also been found.1 Some preliminary methodological remarks are in order. In this study, I will make an attempt to classify the Elean dialect genetically. That is, I will investigate from which dialect group of Greek it has most probably descended. This is not necessarily the group with which it shares the greatest number of features synchronically; as we will see, some of these dialect features were probably secondarily taken over from other dialects. The number of features shared with other dialects is only of interest for a synchronic dialect classification. The ancient Greek dialects have been classified into East- and West Greek. The first group comprises Attic-Ionic, Arcado-Cyprian, Aeolic, and Mycenaean. West Greek consists of Doric and Northwest Greek.2 To the Doric subgroup belong for instance Cretan, Laconian, Arcadian, and Corinthian. Northwest Greek is made up by Phocian, Locrian, Aetolian, Acarnanian, and Epirotic.3 As far as East Greek is concerned, however, Risch (1955) has questioned the grouping of Aeolic under this dialect group. On the basis of relative chronology, he argues that the features which Aeolic shares with East Greek – which are found mostly in Lesbian – are relatively young. According to Risch, these features have found their way into Lesbian by language contact with Ionic, which was geographically close. Hence, parts of Boeotian and Thessalian are the more conservative Aeolic dialects, making the grouping of Aeolic alongside with Doric and Northwest Greek more plausible, Risch argues. This leads him to a regrouping of the ancient Greek dialects into North and South Greek rather than into an East Greek and a West Greek group. In his classification, North Greek consists of Doric, Northwest Greek, and Aeolic, while South Greek comprises Ionic-Attic, Arcado-Cyprian, and Mycenaean. In this thesis, the term West Greek will be used in order to refer to Doric and Northwest Greek as a whole. 1 Minon 2007 : 1-3. 2 Buck 1955 : 7. 3 Thumb-Kieckers 1932 : 251. 5 Scholars agree that the dialect of Greek which is represented by the inscriptions from Elis is a North Greek one, but controversy still exists over the more precise classification of Elean within this dialect group. This disagreement stems from the fact that Elean has shared features not only with Doric, but also with Northwest Greek and Aeolic. Apart from that, Elean also shows some remarkable features of its own.4 Buck has classified Elean under the Northwest Greek subgroup.5 Méndez Dosuna, however, places Elean outside of Northwest Greek and gives preference to an origin within Doric.6 Minon follows Méndez Dosuna’s conclusion, but nevertheless points to some striking isoglosses with Locrian.7 In Bartonĕk’s view, Elean is a separate descendant from Proto-West Greek.8 In view of this lack of consensus, there is every reason to reconsider the historical classification of the Elean dialect. For a genetic classification of Elean, it is of crucial importance to determine with which dialects it shares ancient features. In order to do this, we have to investigate the age of the dialect features of Elean. This will be done on the basis of relative chronology. That is, it will be determined which sequence of sound changes is the more probable one, and, on this basis, which dialect features are the oldest. In the first chapter, a wide range of phonological and morphological features of Elean will be presented and briefly discussed. In chapter 2, a selection of these features is more thoroughly discussed and evaluated. On this basis, I present my preliminary conclusion concerning the dialect position of Elean in chapter 3. Special attention will be paid to shared innovations, which provide a stronger indication of dialectal relatedness than shared archaisms do. However, as García Ramón (2009) argues, the importance of shared archaisms should not be underestimated. In a thorough discussion of Parker’s (2008) arguments against the unity of Aeolic, García Ramón warns against too skeptic an approach when using innovations and archaisms to determine dialectal relatedness. He uses Arcado-Cyprian as a case study. Parker has argued that Arcadian and Cyprian do not form one branch within South Greek because of a lack of ‘demonstrable common innovations’ between the two dialects.9 However, as García Ramón points out, Parker ignores the fact that the retention of a certain feature may indicate dialectal relatedness as well, especially in cases where other dialects have undergone an innovation. For example, the interrelated dialects of Boeotian and Thessalian both use the archaistic patronymic adjective, whereas the dialects 4 One of the most striking of these is word-final rhotacism, i.e. the representation of *-s by <ρ>, found sporadically in the ancient inscriptions but consistently in the more recent ones. The only other ancient Greek dialects which show rhotacism are Eretrian and late-Laconian. Rhotacism lives forth in the Modern Greek Tsakonian dialect. 5 Buck 1955 : 11. 6 Méndez Dosuna 1980 : 181, 200. 7 Minon 2007 : 629. 8 Bartonĕk 1972 : 59-65. 9 García Ramón 2009 : 227. 6 that are situated in between them do not.10 Hence, we should not dismiss shared archaisms between Elean and other dialects too easily: they may provide some indication of relatedness. In what follows, I will therefore, in addition to the innovations, also discuss the retained archaisms of Elean. The overview of dialect characteristics presented in the first chapter is taken from Buck (1955). For the quotation of material from the inscriptions, which have been published by Dittenberger (Die Inschriften von Olympia) in 1896 and more recently by Minon (2007), I will primarily make use of the older inscriptions from the sixth and fifth century B.C. The younger inscriptions will be used in those cases where no material concerning a certain feature is found in the older ones or in cases where conclusions that may be drawn from the younger inscriptions are in contradiction to those drawn from the older ones.